Ithaca College

CSCR 10900 Introduction to Native American Studies TR 4-5:15

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

The experiences of Indigenous peoples in the U.S. are stories of struggle and survival.  While many Americans educated within mainstream systems think of colonization as a thing of the past or a benign episode in the European founding of a “New World,” to Indigenous peoples, colonialism represents the structured violence of ongoing invasions.  Its practices of domination continue in myriad forms, running throughout society, impacting our contemporary lives, and often hidden in plain sight.  Our examination in this course seeks to render legible the social hierarchies of race, gender, and coloniality that inform our contemporary condition.  Centering our approach to the study of Indigenous peoples on Native voices, the course provides students with conceptual tools to develop literacy in Indigenous politics and the settler logics of elimination that remain integral to white colonial heteropatriarchy.  Moving beyond critique, the course will also engage the concepts of Indigenous resistance, resurgence, decolonization, and survivance to explore how Indigenous communities are reclaiming life, land, and sovereignty through self-determination.

Please contact Dr. Iokepa Casumbal Salazar (iokepa@ithaca.edu) with questions.